There's Lots to Learn!

One of the great things about living in a city the size of Toronto is that there are lots of opportunities to take classes about any number of things related to jewellery making and/or beading. Whether it's at weekly course at one of the local colleges (George Brown, Sheridan, OCA), a weekend class at one of the bead stores, a session at the Toronto Bead Society's techniques nights (which take place in December and April) - http://www.torontobeadsociety.org/web/index.php - or a couple of hours here and there at a trade show (such as Bead Oasis, which comes to town twice a year, or the CreativFestival - http://www.csnf.com/, which is coming up just after Thanksgiving), there is lots to learn about a variety of methods and materials and a lot of great teachers willing to show you how to do whatever it is you are interested in. The hard part is picking which class to take, there are only so many hours in a day!!

At the moment, I am taking two courses. One is a 3 week course in wire working and wrapping being offered by Beadfx and being taught by a man named Robert Burton. Here's a picture of what we did in the first class:

We put a cage around a stone and we made a pendant. Now it may not look like much judging by the finished product, but I wouldn't have been able to do it before the class and it was a lot of fun and not very hard, once you got the hang of it. Robert was very patient with all of us and happy to show us what to do as many times as we needed.

The second class I'm taking is a night school course offered by the Toronto District School Board called "Bead Crazy". My sister and I did the beginner course in the spring, so now we've graduated to the intermediate level. Our teacher's name is Katherine and she's just as excited to be teaching as we all are to be taking the class, so it's a lot of fun. Last night was the first of 10 weeks and we made a sweet little necklace out of double wrapped loops and bicone crystals:

I'm looking forward to the coming weeks, to see what we create in upcoming classes. The possibilities are endless!